Vuelta a Espana: Nairo Quintana deals body blow to Froome on stage 15

Short mountain stages often lend themselves to explosive racing, and stage 15 of the Vuelta a Espana, won by Gianluca Brambilla (Etixx-QuickStep), saw race leader Nairo Quintana (Movistar) put Chris Froome (Team Sky) to the sword in spectacular fashion.

The Colombian jumped wholeheartedly on board when three-time Vuelta winner Alberto Contador, sixth overall, attacked and formed a 14-rider breakaway in the opening kilometres of the 118km stage to the Formigal summit finish.

Froome, who had had to chase through the early splits, was well and truly caught out, and, crucially, six of his teammates were left at the back of the race, unable to assist in the chase. Movistar kept the pressure on in the chase group to prevent the Sky domestiques coming back into the frame as a flustered Froome issued panicked messages to his race radio.

Quintana and Contador, who both had two teammates with them in the break, held a lead of two to three minutes across the two small climbs en route to the first-category Alto de Formigal, which was Vuelta’s first-ever summit finish back in 1972.

Quintana took command and jumped away with Contador and Brambilla, while things went from bad to worse for Froome in the chase as he was unable to respond when key riders began to attack – one of them Esteban Chaves, who gained another chunk of time today.

In the end, Quintana, who lost out in the sprint to a fresher Brambilla, put 2:37 into Froome, thanks in part to the six bonus seconds he collected for second place. He said he needed to increase his 54-second lead over Froome with the stage 19 time trial looming, and he will be more than satisfied with the new buffer of 3:37.

Froome, who cut a disconsolate figure as he crossed the line, is still in second place, but sees his chances of finally winning the Vuelta a España dealt a huge blow as he endured one of the worst Grand Tour days of his career. The Tour de France champion may now be looking over his shoulder, as opposed to up at Quintana, as Esteban Chaves stole away from the chase group on the final climb to gain nearly a minute and move to within 20 seconds of Froome overall.

Contador, who kicked off the hostilities, was rewarded with significant gains, moving up into fourth overall and five seconds off the podium, but was unable to move closer to the red jersey as he once again lost contact with Quintana and suffered badly in the final kilometres.

Leopold Konig was the big loser of the day as he missed the early splits and was forced to surrender his fifth place, eventually rolling in over 20 minutes down.

In fact, the gruppetto finished comfortably outside of the time cut, but with such a large group – 91 riders – race officials opted for a liberal application of the rulebook and will allow them all to continue in the race.

Watch the Vuelta a Espana stage 15 highlights video

How it unfolded

With such a short stage and a hilly parcours, an action-packed start to proceedings was expected, but no one would have predicted the drama that did unfold.

It was Brambilla who was first onto the front foot and the race was duly split to pieces. Froome was just coming to terms with it when Contador appeared at the head of the race and put the hammer down. It wasn’t a case of testing the water; he was committed, and gave it everything to open up a gap.

13 riders, including Quintana, managed to join him, and they were: Jonathan Castroviejo and Ruben Fernandez (Movistar), Ivan Rovny and Yuri Trofimov (Tinkoff), Kenny Elissonde (FDJ), Fabio Felline (Trek - Segafredo), Matvey Mamykin (Katusha), Gianluca Brambilla and David de la Cruz (Etixx - QuickStep), Davide Formolo and Moreno Moser (Cannondale - Drapac) and Omar Fraile (Dimension Data).

The group quickly gained 20 seconds and the panic began to spread across Froome’s face, as he had just David Lopez and Salvatore Puccio for support. He spoke into his radio to try and get the rest of his teammates organised into a chase, but Movistar, through Alejandro Valverde and Imanol Erviti, supplied injections of pace to prevent a regrouping.

Puccio was soon unable to live with the pace and Froome was down to one teammate, though he did find some support in the form of Orica-BikeExchange – riding for Chaves and Simon Yates – and Astana, who did a surprising amount of work for ninth-placed Michele Scarponi.

Fraile took maximum points atop the third-category Alto de Petralba and the second-category Alto de Cotefablo to reduce the gap to Elissonde in the mountains classification, and the lead group collaborated well to sustain their advantage of around 2:30, while moments of disorganisation hampered the chase. By the foot of the Formigal, then, it was an exercise in damage limitation for Froome and Chaves.

Castroviejo, Trofimov and Rovny buried themselves for their leaders on the lower slopes of the Formigal before Quintana took command towards the top, the man with the most to gain doing all the work. Only Contador and Brambilla could keep up, though the former fell away in final couple of kilometres – eventually finishing sixth – while the Italian sat in the wheel and prepared to snatch the stage.

Lower down, though the chase group had started the climb just two minutes down thanks to Astana’s Andrey Zeits and Luis Leon Sanchez, it soon started to break up as riders made digs and then eased up.

That spelled trouble for the chase and for Froome, who was well and truly on the ropes as Movistar twisted the knife. With Valverde moving to the front and clearly in no hurry, Froome realised he had to try and take control, and when he pulled off in search of someone else to take it up, Valverde put in a stinging attack to force the Sky leader to get out of the saddle and sprint again, wiping out his respite and disrupting his rhythm.

Soon Froome began to lose ground, unable to hold the pace as more attacks went up the road. Chaves, who snuck clear towards the end of yesterday’s stage on the Aubisque, repeated the trick and salvaged his day by putting a good chunk of time into Froome.

The three-time Tour de France champion looked thoroughly miserable as he trudged over the line and swerved the media who were waiting to begin the inquest into one of the most dramatic Vuelta stages of recent history.

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